Entao......

As the plane hovered over Rio De Janeiro just before landing, a sea of a thousand twinkling eyes welcomed me to the city that would be my home for the next 3 months. The woman who had necked sparkling wine throughout most of the flight turned to her boyfriend as they peered out the window and said 'Look at the fireworks baby'. I wondered if she knew about firework parties in the favela, cos I certainly didn't. Slightly concerned there would be no one to pick me up, I was pleasantly suprised when my 6ft 3 driver took me and two back packers to his rather beat up car and spun us all the way to the hill that was to be home, in Santa Teresa.

Within minutes of dumping my bags I was trudging further up that hill to savour my first caipirinha and brazilian bum grope. It didn't take long to make friends and in less than twenty minutes I had a Pink Floyd veteran pouring me cerveja and attempting to understand my pigeon portuguese. Being a streetwise kind of girl, I made sure to ask him if there was any rohypnol in the beer but this only confused him more so I decided to drink the beer anyway. He was wearing tie dye after all.